Rough Passages: The Collected Stories
Page 4
Of course it was Valerie’s fault. “What’s he done now?”
“He wanted me to say you were unfit, and he sent papers, but I wouldn’t sign, because you’re not unfit. You’re not. You’re a good mother, as good as you can be. I know that.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Valerie said, and her mother kept on talking.
“He called when the papers didn’t come back, and he yelled at me and said no dirty poz would raise any sons of his. You are poz, and he deserved to know, but oh, why couldn’t you be more discreet? Why can’t you pretend?” Mom’s voice turned resentful and bitter. “Everything was fine before all this happened.”
Valerie helped her into bed like always without saying another word, and then she retreated to the living room. Anxiety made her head ache, but she dredged up her courage and listened to Dante murmur and her boys laugh while she wrote a note to the too-expensive lawyer who had arranged her divorce. She would hope for the best.
Even if DPS didn’t have legal clout with Family Services, her husband had acted badly enough in public, that he wouldn’t get custody easily. Charm only went so far. She would fight John even harder than she had in the divorce, when she’d first learned that she had a backbone after all. Her backbone was stronger now.
The note was done and Dante’s bedding was ready on the couch before the boys fell asleep. The Marine rolled up in the blankets on the couch fully-clothed, and Valerie went to her bedroom and stared at the dark ceiling for hours while Mom snored in the other bed and her fears clamored loudly at her.
She escaped into unsettled dreams and woke to the strident beeping of smoke alarms, and she thought it was a nightmare until she sat up. Harsh smoke clogged her nose and throat, tasting of ash and stinging tears from her eyes. A crackling roar filled the darkness with fearful noise. She reached for the lamp switch. Nothing happened. The room remained pitch black.
Johnny screamed, “MOMMY!”
She was out of bed and heading for the boys before she was awake enough to think the building is burning and remember her fire drill training. Was the bedroom door cool? Too late, she was past it. Should she be standing up? No. Her lungs felt heavy, and spots floated in her vision. She dropped to her hands and knees, then lower, and gasped for air.
The stench of gasoline joined the reek of smoke, and the hall was hot and blacker than black, but not hot enough to kill her in the doorway. With a wrench of willpower Valerie peered through the darkness. The apartment layout lit up as if traced in lines of light, and a hellish glow suffused all the invisible walls on the interior: danger, get away, get away. There would be no escape down the fire stairs at the end of the building.
Valerie moved on her elbows, gasping, and her lungs filled with the acrid heat. The few feet to the boys room seemed like a million miles. Her sight deserted her, and embers bit and stung her bare arms.
One thought stayed cool and clear: get to Johnny and Gary.
A figure loomed out of the blackness, surrounded by a pale eerie glow. When Valerie screamed, she couldn’t hear her own voice. Dante crouched and caught her by the arms. “Front door is blistering,” he shouted in her ear. “Wall’s burning through.”
He couldn’t know Valerie knew that. She shouted back, “Boys’ room! Fire ladder!” and led the way. Orange tongues of flames licked through the roiling smoke in the entryway behind them, lighting up a thick gray cloud above her. She flinched from the heat inside the bathroom as she crawled past.
Johnny and Gary were hiding under their bed, too frightened to move. Valerie didn’t question how she knew they were there. She saw, and she grabbed them while Dante crawled onward, and they clung to her as she made her way to the window behind him. Hot, gritty water squished under her elbows and knees.
Glass shattered, and the smoke boiled outside and let in fresh air. Valerie took a strained breath that turned into coughs. She pointed to the toy chest. Dante grabbed the rope ladder, anchored it and shook it out. Then he peeled the boys off Valerie one by one, his every touch a wet caress, and gently lowered them through the window.
The boys practiced with that ladder every month, and they scuttled down it without hesitation once they got started. Valerie watched them until they were safe on the ground.
Waiting hands gathered them in, and someone called upwards, but she couldn’t understand a word. Lights flashed everywhere, and all the voices were a jumble of shouts. People milled in a crowd of nightgowns and bare chests and blankets, faces tilted upwards, mouths gaping open, fingers pointing. They were painted in reds and oranges, blues and white from the flashing emergency lights and the glow of the fire.
Valerie shook like a leaf, overwhelmed, and horror wrapped around her chest so tight she could not cough. Her children were safe—but they were safe because she’d not thought even for an instant about her own mother. “Oh, God, no. Mom. Oh, Mom.”
Wood splinters stabbed her fingertips as her nails bit into the windowsill, and she sobbed, because she could not face that hallway again, could not even turn around to look at it. The smoke in the room flickered with an evil bright glow; the fire was eating across the hall. The shadows danced and wavered. She could not move. She could not leave her mother in that hell.
Dante embraced her, his arms damp and cool, and the roar of the flames was so loud she heard his shout as a whisper. “Go, ma’am. Go on. The boys need you. I’ll take care of your mom.”
She couldn’t move, but when Dante put her hands on the ladder, her body moved on its own. When she reached the bottom rung, she was surrounded and pushed back and forth by kind hands that wrapped her fingers around a bottle of water, flashed lights in her face and wiped it clean, and finally reunited her with her boys.
Johnny climbed up her leg to bury his face against her hip, and she hefted Gary in both arms before she turned back, head tilted up and gaping like all the rest. The building was edged and crowned in leaping flames now, gold and yellow against the black smoke and the white sprays of hoses. She’d never imagined how loud and bright a fire could be, how swiftly it could spread. A whimper caught hoarse in her throat, coarse with fear, clawing her with guilt.
People were still coming out the front door, out the fire stairs at either end of the building. All around, jets of water rose, and ladders went up from trucks. The streams of water wavered and split, multiplied and augmented by poz elementals on the fire department team, while their air and fire specialists smothered and killed the blazing embers that leaped to other roofs. Despite their best efforts, the top floor—Valerie’s floor—was fully engulfed in flames. Like the other buildings being doused with preventative measures, the unit was older than the fire codes, and its wood frame was desert-dry.
Her mother was up there. “Mom,” she whispered, “Oh, God, please, Mom.”
Conversations fell around her along with the hot flicks of ash and the mist from the fire hoses.
It went up so fast. Where did it start? Is everyone out? They don’t know?
Valerie knew. Her mother wasn’t the only one trapped. She could see lives through the walls, tiny sparks in the smoke. Her whole body tightened, willing them to move, for them to descend safe and sound. None did. No shuffling woman with gray hair in curlers appeared at the fire door, no tall, dark man who glowed like death, no one at all. They were all on the third floor, trapped above flame, inside flame.
A commotion stirred the crowd of neighbors and onlookers to her left, offering a glimpse of the entrance to the building. A pair of firefighters dragged out a tall man whose feet scraped on the ground. They threw him at the waiting police in blue uniforms and clean, flat-brimmed hats. The murmurs of conversation shifted, carrying cold news.
Him? On purpose? How do they know? Look at that. Do you think he tried to burn himself up too? I hope he dies.
Valerie was not sure if she heard that last whisper, or if she only thought it. She knew that man’s jutting cheekbones even when they were bristling with beard stubble. She knew his voice, badgering the polic
e with reminders about his rights, complaining of his injuries and informing them how they would regret messing with him.
She knew John’s face, and the soul shining through his skin was even more twisted now than when she’d first seen it with her new eyes. Her stomach heaved, and she knelt to hide the boy’s faces, that they wouldn’t see their father being dragged away in handcuffs.
If he couldn’t have them, no one could; that was how his mind worked, with no thought at all for the other lives he’d endangered. They all deserved to die, he was shouting now, so lost in his sickness that he thought that incriminating himself was a defense. It was Valerie’s fault, for leaving him, for lying to him about being a monster, for keeping his sons from him. It was her fault, he screamed, until one of the paramedics touched him on the forehead and let him fall unconscious to the ground.
Then he was strapped onto a gurney and driven off with his police escort. Valerie let the sick feelings drain out of her, into the muddy earth at her feet, but the screams echoed in her head. Doubts stirred, awakened by the accusations. Was this her fault?
The night roared, and the garish light from the burning building vanished beneath a huge, moving mass of blackness. Valerie’s ears popped. Everything went quiet between breaths before the crowd noise surged up louder than ever, with people shouting exclamations and happy comments across each other until they sounded like a flock of gulls fighting over a piece of bread.
A fishy scent came to Valerie on a wet breeze, tasting of salt, and she stared at the smoking building. With the flames extinguished, the blue and white lights on the emergency vehicle cast new and deeper shadows now, but the foamy water still cascading down the siding was bright as day to her, phosphorescent with power. The gull-noises of the crowd whirled around her.
It smells like ocean. It’s a miracle. Did you hear a helicopter? How did they get so much water here, so fast?
“He brought it,” Valerie whispered. She set down Gary and grabbed his hand and Johnny’s. She ran with them, stumbling and pushing her way past neighbors and strangers towards the tall, thin glowing man carrying Mom out the fire door.
Dante set Mom down on the bottom step before he staggered and dropped, and other people ran or limped or staggered out the door past him without pausing. He’d said he would take care of Mom, and he’d kept his promise. The cost shimmered in his eyes, and it blazed through his body so fiercely that Valerie could see it killing him from yards away.
The crowd came shouting forward, but they fell back again at the orders of firefighters and medics who brought oxygen masks and blankets and helping hands. All the victims were hurried out of harm’s way, until only a few first responders stood there, helpless in the face of suffering they could not ease. With them stood Mom, leaning heavily on a firefighter’s arm and crying her eyes out.
Valerie didn’t question the way the crowd parted for her, nor the way the first responders broke ranks to let her join them. She didn’t question Gary allowing himself to be scooped into a stranger’s arms, or Johnny holding tight to his brother’s hand as he released hers. She didn’t question any of it, because she needed to be there too much to think of anything else.
“Hey,” Dante whispered when he saw her. Ocean surf crashed in his eyes, and death rolled under his smile. Valerie blinked back tears, and Dante said, “Looks like I won’t be giving you that ride to work after all.”
More words wouldn’t come. She swallowed tears and mouthed a voiceless thank you. Dante laughed, low in his chest, as much a little boy in that moment as Valerie’s were, and then he dipped his chin in a pleased nod.
“Told you I’d make my mark before I was done,” he said. “This’ll do.”
He stopped breathing then, the inner light died with him, and his flesh dissolved into the dirt. A moment later, a tiny burble of water welled up and began to trickle its way across the lawn.
“I will go anyway,” Valerie whispered, and all the lingering doubts ran down into the earth with her tears. “I will.”
How could she do anything else, after this? She let the cool new water roll over her fingers, fresh and sweet, and she put her hand over her heart and swore she would not waste the gift she’d been given. She would climb on that shuttle to Salton, she would face the unknown with all the strength she could muster, and she would never forget what honor looked like.
The world crashed back, surrounding her with noisy commotion and confusion. Johnny came running back and cried against her leg because she was crying, while Gary stood silent and hiccupped around the fist he was chewing on.
Mom coughed and hobbled closer. “He did good,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Valerie shook her head. That was the highest compliment Mom ever offered, and she’d bestowed it on a man she barely accepted as human. “Nice, Mom. Real nice. Would you say that to his face if he was alive?”
“Yes.” Mom said the word without inflection, but something made Valerie turn to see her. The truth left her stunned, and Mom said, “I would try.”
It was a choked whisper like a babe’s first cry, a first, feeble attempt at something new. Sometimes the best wasn’t enough, even when it was all someone had. Sometimes the smallest effort could change everything.
“That’s good.” Valerie took a deep breath of ocean-scented air that would always remind her of this night, and she opened her eyes wide, to let life amaze her with all the good things still in it. “That’s all any of us can ever do.”
The Letter
This is the letter that R-factor carriers dread. Receiving it means at best your life as you know it is over: you're about to become a social outcast who will face harassment, physical harm, and rejection for the rest of your living days. At worst it's a death sentence couched in bureaucratic double-speak.
Dear
Your Ackerman-Chung R-factor activation test result for the year
Your name, status, and Federal identification number have been forwarded to the Department of Public Safety, and you will report to the nearest Adaptation & Placement Facility by
A list of available facilities is attached. All efforts will be made to accommodate you your preferred choice, but vacancies at the time of your internment and the nature of your transition may require transfer to any DPS-certified facility. (note 1)
Prepare for a stay of one to twelve months. If further training and/or containment is deemed warranted by the personnel in charge of your transition, you may at any point be remanded to the custody of the Department of Defense, USMC Mercury Battalion, for additional training in compliance with appropriate laws . (FL729-87/1943, FL 11/1959) (note 2)
The DPS highly recommends a visit your local Administration office at your earliest convenience. Specialists there can determine how best the Department can meet your and your family’s needs and will assist you with transition paperwork and all necessary travel arrangements. Appeals for hardship exemptions can be filed at that time. Due to the unpredictability of transition outcomes, all active R-factor citizens are encouraged to put personal and financial affairs in order before reporting in.
If no DPS office exists within reasonable distance (refer to FL803-66/1946 for specifics) then you may access the national DPS hotline for assistance with any questions. Under the above circumstances you must also sign and return this letter in the enclosed envelope to any United States Postal Service Facility to confirm its receipt. You remain responsible for reporting to one of the DPS Adaptation facilities on the attached list before the date listed above. Payment vouchers for public transportation will be provided via the USPS. (FL2591-14/1962) (note 3)
All arriving program participants may bring one (1) small suitcase up to 2000 cubic inches for clothing and personal effects. A list of prohibited items is attache
d. Additional FAQ materials can be found online. Meals, bedding, appropriate training equipment, medicines, (note 4) and personal hygiene supplies will be provided by DPS personnel for the duration of your stay.
If returning this letter as your official registration, please list your preferences below so staff can better accommodate your needs during your time in DPS custody:
Room: smoking/non-smoking
Meals: vegetarian/vegan/ other diet (please specify)
The Department of Public Safety thanks you for your cooperation.
Regards,
Central Office of Adaptation & Placement
United States Department of Public Safety.
ATTACHMENTS:
Adaptation Facilities currently open to(continental US)
Prohibited Personal Effects List
NOTES:
(1) Due to uneven geographic dispersion, there may be no facility vacancies in your immediate vicinity. Facilities have been listed in increasing geographic distance from your address. Transportation will be provided at no cost by all common carriers. Not all facilities are suitable for all types of transitions.
(2) Military supervision of no less than one (1) year is compulsory for certain power classes. Please check with your local DPS office or the national website for the current listings. These designations cannot be legally appealed.
(3) Postal records indicate you do NOT qualify for assistance from the national hotline. Be aware there are substantial fees associated for unauthorized access of this service. If you believe your case is not being handled well by your local DPS office, please file a complaint online or through the USPS. Forms available on request.
(4)All personal medical records will be forwarded to the appropriate DPS personnel upon receipt of this release.
Powerhouse
Gateway Company Brig Observation Room 1
MARINE CORPS CAMP BUTLER, ELGIN IL